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From The Past - 1971

Oconto County
ReporterNovember 11, 1971

The
Glory that Was
Stiles

PAT
CURLEY'S HALL THE place to go for
entertainment in Oconto County. Besides
the bar room there was a huge second floor ballroom. To read more about
the excitement and the people who enjoyed it ,please click on:ST.
PATRICKS DAY DANCE AT PAT CURLEY'S HALL - 50 years agoThis photograph was taken in
1905 as a crowd gathered
for the 4th of July Celebration.
Eugene VanLanden had purchased
the building by this time. It was destroyed by fire two years later.

In its heyday in the
mid-1800’s the community was on the
social register. There was a grand ballroom where women,
dressed
in ruffles, lace and bustles, danced with men in cutaways, to the
finest
music that could be had. It was the place to go on New
Year’s Eve,
or whenever the occasion called for a particularly gala celebration,
and
the "elite" arrived by the sleigh load to waltz and party the night
away.

Where was this
social center of the early days?
In a flourishing settlement on the banks of the Oconto river called
Stiles.

The history of
Stiles is a fascinating one. It’s
the story of a community that rose to the heights on a footing of
northern
pine, died an untimely death within a generation, was revived by a
railroad,
and then suffered a second demise when fires burned down the mills and
much of the rest of the town.

The story begins
in 1839 when the settlement was first
surveyed, and when the town of Stiles included most of present Oconto
county
north of Suamico and Pensaukee, and west of Oconto.

In 1850 Merrick
Murphy obtained a deed for land from
Thomas Lindsey, built a dam across the Oconto river, and started a
logging
operation. But the boom didn’t really start until a
year later when
an enterprising lumberman named Anson Eldred came along and bought
himself
a partnership with Murphy.

Eldred, who at the
early age of 22, already had a lumber
yard in Milwaukee, started his lumbering operations in Wisconsin and
southern
Michigan through a series of partnerships in 1842, and in a short time
became possibly the largest land owner in Oconto county.

After taking over
Murphy’s interest in 1853, Eldred began
building “his town” and named it for his son,
Howard Stiles Eldred.
His lumbering business grew by leaps and bounds, and in the season of
1855-1856,
Eldred inventoried over 21 million feet of logs in the river or at the
mill. A fleet of Eldred ships, including a schooner, six
brigs and
a bark barge, took the lumber to market, some of which ended up as far
away as England and Scotland, bringing a kind of international fame to
the country for the quality of its white pine timbers.

In 1856 Anson
formed a partnership with his brother,
Elisha, and Uri Balcom of New York, but it was short-lived, ending in
two
years when Balcom went to Oconto to join with Devillo Holt in a
lumbering
operation, the latter was then starting there. John Nelligan,
another
colorful figure on the lumbering scene, was also at Stiles during this
period.

The majority of
the hands at the Stiles mills were
Indians, among them Chief Machickanee of the Menominees, a colorful
figure
who, on ceremonial occasions, wore a Prince Albert coat, high hat- and
no trousers. By pitching his tepee during hunting season at
the spring
south of the river, Chief Machickanee succeeded in having that body of
water named for him, and in time, an entire forest.

Indians continued
to be a common sight in the settlement
for many years to come, as they traveled down the rod to their burying
ground at Leighton. For the most part, the settlers and
Indians got
along amicably, but one unfortunate example of
“man’s inhumanity to man”
found its way into the Reporter’s pages of a November issue
in 1881.
To quote:

"On Sunday last
while a band of Indians composed of
a chief, 10 or 12 squaws and an aged Indian, who was carrying a sick
child,
were passing through this place (Stiles), the latter was brutally
assaulted
by a band of ruffians. His rifle was taken from him, and
after being
pursued by a hooting and yelling mob, he was finally taken from his
horse
and, with the sick child in his arms, was dragged about on the
ground.
With such abuse at this we need not wonder that the Indians are a
rebellious
people."

*
* *

As a general rule,
however, life in the community was
good. A favorite pastime of the villagers on warm evenings
was to
sit along the river bank, watching the water and sky turn luminous from
the mill waste burning in an “open fireplace” on
the island. And
in the spring, with the return of the lumberjacks from the woods, the
town
vibrated with their exuberance as they tramped along the wooden walks
or
celebrated their release from the winter’s hard work in the
bars of such
hotels as John McIvers Forest House and Eldred’s Stiles House.

STILES
BECOMES A
GHOST TOWN

After a quarter
century of envious prosperity, things
began to go bad for Stiles as Anson Eldred started looking elsewhere
for
mill sites. In 1873 he built a mill and dams at Little
Suamico, and
in 1876 he bought out the England, Taylor and Company mill on the south
side of the river in Oconto. (Area across from present
Jefferson
school – Editor). He also had a partnership with
his son, Howard,
in a mill at Fort Howard, and had mills at Little Sturgeon and in
Florida.
The Stiles mill was no longer his main operation, and its neglect began
to show in the town.

By 1881 the
settlement had become a ghost town.
When in that year, a fire destroyed one of Eldred’s boarding
houses at
Stiles, built in 1857, it was reported there were only two families
left
in town “to guard the forsaken property”.
Noted the Reporter:
"For nearly four years now, none but an occasional traveler or log
driver
have occupied the deserted buildings."

And then came word that the
Wisconsin and Milwaukee Railroad
Company was considering building a line through Stiles that would run
to
the iron mines up north. If the rumor were true, a miracle of
rebirth
might once again restore Stiles to its former position of prominence in
the county. The excitement the news created is evidenced by
this
story sent to the Reporter by the Stiles correspondent in 1881:

"A railroad boom
has set in and we are going to enjoy
it while it lasts, be it permanent or transient, and we hope to see
Stiles
once more a live town. It has slept long enough, unless it is
going
to sleep the sleep that knows no waking. The railroad
surveying party
has passed through here and left a row of stakes behind.
Whether
they will get lost in the wilderness north of us and never return, I
don’t
know, but we will enjoy those stakes while we have them.
Anything
for a change."

Meanwhile a
delegation of prominent Oconto citizens,
including Holt, Balcom, Mayor William Young and O. A. Ellis, made a
trip
to Milwaukee in an attempt to talk the railroad people into laying the
track through Oconto, claiming: "In the way of freights and passengers
the company would get more money from this city in a month than it
would
from Stiles in a year."

That was in
January, but in February it was definitely
established that the route would run through Stiles.

The ghost town
came alive. A new town site was
laid out and new mills erected under the company name of Eldred and
Son.
By 1882 a post office was established at the village and named
"Eldred",
with Howard Stiles Eldred appointed postmaster. "It could not
be
called Stiles", said a March 4 Reporter item, "for the reason that an
office
by that name already exists in the town of Stiles."

The regrowth that
the railroad brought is shown in
this 1887 Reporter description of Stiles:

"Robert McIvers
has a fine big hotel at Stiles Junction,
and near the depot is a hotel and saloon kept by James
Hurley. Next
door is the saloon of Pat Hurley, and next to that, the saloon and meat
shop of Joseph McClusky. Further on is the shop on Henry
VanVagel,
the village shoemaker.

"Anson Eldred
& Son has a planing mill across the
lower bridge, and also owns the community’s largest hotel,
the Stiles House.
The houses are chiefly built by the company and look so much alike we
were
told there’s many a man has his keyhole fumbled around by his
neighbor
long after he is in bed. At the west end of the village is
the Forest
House (the old Luby Hotel) operated by John McIver."

And, in 1896, the
paper reported: 'The village
of Stiles is also possessed of attractions. Besides the Anson
Eldred
Company mills, it may boast of a superior creamery, and a large herd of
beautiful Jerseys. The creamery is one of the best in
northern Wisconsin
and is under the capable supervision of J. W. Whipple. Its
daily
production averages 225 pounds of butter."

THE
DOWNHILL RIDE
BEGINS AGAIN

Things
went well
for Stiles until the dawn of the Twentieth
Century. But fate seemed to have a personal vendetta with the
plucky
community that had died once, and been reborn again. And if
there
is little now to show of the "glory that was Stiles", it can be blamed
on the demon fire.

THE
FOREST HOUSE

It began in 1900
when fire swept over the section of
the village where the Eldred buildings stood, destroying the company
store,
barns and many workers’ houses. Then, in 1904, the
Forest House,
then owned by W. J. Classon, burned down, and another old landmark was
gone.

Howard
Eldred
continued to operate the sawmill until
1910 when the last log was sent through. The planing mill and
yards
closed two years later with a final wailing blast of the whistle " let
off by Joseph Bergemeier " and the mill workers and their families
began
to move away. Some, however, found work when the mill was
converted
to a pulp operation. Eldred Klauser was secretary of the
company.

But fate, with
fire her handmaiden, wasn’t through
yet. On March 12, 1918 sparks from a passenger train passing
through
the village at midnight started a fire that carried off the railroad
station
and coal dock.

The final blow
fell on a warm summer’s night in 1924,
spelling finis to the last remaining industry in the village.
The
“obituary” was reported under a June 26 dateline by
the Reporter:

ELDRED MILL BURNS
AT STILES

"Ole B. Olsen, 67,
oiler, lost his wife and a loss
of between $70,000 and $80,000 was suffered by the Anson Eldred Company
of Stiles Saturday when the pulp mill was destroyed by fire."

After that, no one
looked for another miracle and one
by one the people moved away until only eight or nine families remained.

On March 3, 1927,
the Reporter had still another unpleasant
happening to relate from Stiles. To quote: “A
reward of $500 is offered
by the Anson Eldred Company for information leading to the arrest and
conviction
of the parties who attempted to rob, and who set fire to the U.S. post
office and general store at Stiles Saturday night. Frank
McAllister,
awakened by the siren of the burglar alarm, notified Eldred Klauser,
who
arrived to find the store a mass of flames. As the village
has no
fire fighting equipment, a call was put into Oconto, but Bert Harris
and
his men arrived too late to save the building.

But there was
still the Stiles House, that famous hostelry
erected before the Civil War, a three-story wooden structure with 40
rooms,
and a grand suite reserved for the mill owners. Now, since
there
was no need for it any longer as a boarding house for mill workers, it
was redecorated and converted into a “country tea
room” and summer hotel
in 1928.

With cities like
Milwaukee and Chicago growing noisy
and congested, the resort at Stiles was not at a loss for customers as
people came by car and train to the peace and beauty of the Machickanee
forest area. But that, too, was to be a shortlived boon to
the village.
In February of 1932 a conflagration that threatened for a time to burn
down all of the village, swept away the historic Stiles House.

A
SECOND
RESURRECTION

It is now 125
years since Anson Eldred started his
town and almost half a century since the old mill burned. But
Stiles
has something going for it that even the loss of industry and the
devastation
of fire could not negate: a scenic woodland location on the
river.
And today, instead of being a ghost town, the population of Stiles is
steadily
growing and now numbers about 400.

The big business
in Stiles now is in real estate, as
more and more “big city” people buy lots for homes
and cottages. And many
who before were only seasonal residents, are now retiring permanently
to
their summer homes.

To
accommodate the
migrating public, Stiles now has
a half-dozen stopping-off places, the Alamo Club, the Chicken Shack,
the
Machickanee restaurant and filling station, Truckey’s tavern
and restaurant,
Boot’s club and the 141 Club. Stiles also has a
flourishing florist
business on the river road, as in the village an upholstery shop
operated
by Frank Ellner. Just recently, for the first time in its
history,
it acquired a resident medical professional of Dr. John Younger,
dentist.

REV.
CHARLES
HOGSTEELE First
Catholic Priest at Stiles(St.
Patrick)

In spite of the
frequency of fires, and mass migrations
from the town, two "institutions" have survived from
Stiles’ past.
One is St. Patrick’s Catholic church, which, with its rectory
and church
cemetery, dominates the hill north of the river.

The other is Mrs.
Alice Connors’ general store, the
focal point of the town, not only because it is the only store there,
but
also because demonstrated affection and concern Alice has for her town
and its people.

The business
started with Alice’s father, Eugene Van
Lanen, one of the town’s early residents, who arrived with
his parents
as a boy. About 1895 Mr. Van Lanen bought Pat
Curley’s place and
renovated it into a dance hall and tavern. When the building
burned
in the 1907 fire, he moved from the highway into the town, where he
build
a two-story brick hotel and tavern.

While
the Eldred
mills were running and lumberjacks
were an important part of the town’s population, the business
flourished.
But then prohibition came along in the 1920’s, the mill
burned in 1924,
and business went downhill. When the Eldred Company store
burned
in 1927, Van Lanen turned his operation in to a general store.